Archives for September 2008

Well, I doubt this is THE geekiest combination of things I’ve ever done at once, but it probably comes close.

Monday night I was watching Big Bang Theory, laughing at Sheldon recounting why he couldn’t be a Green Lantern (duh, has to get a ring from the Guardians on Oa, etc.) but he could be Batman (as if), while cutting out D&D 4th edition power cards that I printed from a template I downloaded from EN World, using the Magic Set Editor for printing out home-brewed Magic: the Gathering cards (downloaded from SourceForge.net, home of open source software). While wearing a Rasputina t-shirt. (sitting in front of a coffee table piled with comics)

Saturday’s game was very fun, and very different. Our DM had a timed combat set up of 25 rounds, with particular things scheduled to happen at various points. And happen things did.

We had gone to the town of Sandpoint at the behest of Rashmali’s cousin Aadrashini, because giants were attacking. Understatement. Lots of giants were attacking. We spent the time running from one end of Sandpoint to the other, dispatching clusters of giants. Fortunately I was in a mood to use up magic items I’d been carrying around for a very long time. Mordecai decided to use the scroll of fly we’d acquired ages ago, and now I’ve decided that fly is essential for a gnome. He’s taking the fell flight invocation as soon as he can. It was very cool to be able to fly around and eldritch blast the heck out of monsters from a safe distance.

We were fine with fighting the stone giants, but then the juvenile red dragon swooped over. Ack! I was worried about that, but Bellos (J’s tauran druid) zapped it with baleful polymorph and turned it into a lizard!!

That was the coolest moment of the whole game. WOW.

We managed to defeat the giant menace in the alloted time and prevented the destruction of most of the town. Quin, Bellos and Rashmali have gone up to 10th level, and Mordecai’s at 9th.

Brandis Dale’s parents and grandparents were members of the Order of the Crucible, so naturally Brandis rebelled for a time, wandering through the forests and the cities of the fallen Empire on his own. After witnessing the dangers faced by the common people (when he got the scar creasing his face), he returned to the Order and begged for a place in it. Quiet, moody and somewhat fierce in appearance because of his scar, Brandis can be very kind, especially to children, and cares deeply for the needs of the common folk.

We didn’t get to play much, but we have the beginnings of an intriguing adventure ahead, finding out more about Rashmali’s people, the benraman. We played for not quite an hour, then sold stuff and bought more stuff, which took about three hours. But it had been ages since we’d done that, since before the Underdark, so we had a backlog. I still haven’t gotten to see how Mordecai performs as a gnome; he’s fought a scale golem, but those have spell resistance. He made some tasty magic item purchases that should help in that area.

I’m excited about running a one-shot 4th edition game for S. on the 20th. I’m reading through Keep on the Shadowfell and will mod it to some extent–well, the extent is getting greater and greater the more I get into it. Should be interesting, and fun to run a game again, although 4e still seems more like a minis game than D&D. I’ll try and reserve judgement though.